"ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY."
The hardest task ever set for mortal endeavor is for us to allow other
people to know less than we know.
The failure to perform this task has kindled the fagots about the
stake where heretics perished for obstinacy.
It is not a week, by the way, since I heard a woman, gently nurtured
and intellectual, lament that those "old Pilgrim forefathers were so
disagreeably obstinate." She "wondered that their generation did not
send them to the scaffold instead of across the sea."
Inability to suffer the rest of the world to be mistaken has set a
nation by the ears, broken hearts and fortunes, and separated more
chief friends than all other alienating causes combined. Many
self-deluding souls set down their impatience with others' errors to a
spirit of benevolence. They love their friends too dearly, they have
too sincere a desire for the welfare of acquaintances, to let them
hold mischievous tenets.
The cause of variance may appear contemptible to an indifferent third
party.
To the average reasoner who has no personal concern in the debate, it
may seem immaterial at what date Mrs. Jenkyns paid her last visit to
Boston. She is positive that it was in March, 1889. Mr. Jenkyns is as
certain that she accompanied him thither in April of that year. She
establishes her position by the fact that she left her baby for the
first time when the cherub was ten months old, and there is the Family
Bible to prove that he was born May 10, 1888. Is she likely to be
mistaken on such a point when she cried all night in Boston and the
bereft infant wailed all night in New York? What does Charles take her
for? Hasn't he said, himself, dozens of times, that there is no use
arguing as to times and seasons with a woman who verifies these by her
children's ages? Mr. Jenkyns has said so--but with a difference. There
is no use arguing with a woman in any circumstances, whatsoever. That
Emma tries to carry her point now by lugging in the poor little kid,
who has nothing whatever to do with the case, is but another proof of
the inconsequence of the sex. He has the stub of his check-book to
show that he paid the hotel bill in Boston, April 11, 1889. Figures
cannot lie. Mrs. Charles Jenkyns challenges the check-book on the
spot--and the wrangle goes on until she seeks her chamber to have her
cry out, and he storms off to office or club, irritated past
forbearance by the pig-headed perversity of a creature he called
"angel" with every third breath on their wedding journey to Boston in
1886.
Each of the combatants was confident, after the first exchange of
shots, that the other was in error. Half an hour's quarreling left
both doubly confident of the truth which was self-evident from the
outset. It is sadly probable that neither will ever confess, to
himself or to herself, that the only wise course for either to pursue
would have been to let ignorance have its perfect work, by abstaining
from so much as a hint of contradiction.
"I don't see how you held your temper and your tongue!" said one man
to another, as a self-satisfied acquaintance strutted away from the
pair after a monologue of ten minutes upon a matter of which both of
his companions knew infinitely more than he. "I hadn't patience to
listen to him, much less answer him good-humoredly--he is such a
fool!"
"I let him alone because he is a fool."
"But he is puffed up by the fond impression that you agree with him!"
"That doesn't hurt me,--and waste of cellular tissue in such a cause
would!"
"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?" asks Solomon. "There is
more hope of a fool than of him."
Which I take to mean that self-conceit is the rankest form of folly, a
sort of triple armor of defence against counter-statement and
rebutting argument. So far as my experience goes to prove a
disheartening proposition,--all fools are wise (to themselves) in
their own conceit. The first evidence of true wisdom is humility. One
may be ignorant without being foolish. Lack of knowledge because the
opportunity for acquiring it has been withheld, induces in the human
mind such conditions as we find in a sponge that has been cleaned and
dried. Information fills and enlarges the pores. Ignorance that is
content with itself is turgid and saturated. It will take up no more,
no matter what is offered.
This is the form of folly which the preacher admonishes us to answer
in kind. The effort to force the truth upon the charged sponge is an
exercise of mental muscle akin to the beating of the air, deprecated
by the Apostle to the Gentiles.
"Such stolid stupidity is incredible in a land where education is
compulsory!" exclaimed a friend who, having talked himself out of
breath in the effort to persuade a rich vulgarian into belief of one
of the simplest of philosophical principles, had the mortification of
seeing that his opponent actually flattered himself with the idea that
_he_ had come off victorious in the wordy skirmish. "One would have
thought that living where he does, and as he does, he would have taken
in such knowledge through the pores."
"Not if the pores were already full," was a retort that shed new light
into the educated mind.
Folly has a law and language of its own with which intelligence
intermeddles not. The workings of an intellect at once untrained and
self-sufficient are like the ways of Infinite Wisdom--past finding
out.
Philosophy and politeness harmonize in the effort to meet such
intellects upon what they shall not suspect is "made ground." To apply
to them the rules of conversation and debate you would use in
intercourse with equals would be absurd, and disagreeable alike to you
and to themselves. They would never forgive a plain statement of the
difference between you and their guild.
As a matter of curious experiment, I made the attempt once, in a case
of a handsome dolt, who was, nominally, a domestic in my employ for a
few months. She had an affected pose and tread which she conceived to
be majestic. She was stupid, awkward and slovenly about her work, and
altogether so "impossible" that I disliked to send her adrift upon the
world, and was still more averse to imposing her upon another
household. In a weak moment I essayed to reason her out of her fatuous
vanity, and stimulate in her a desire to make something better of
herself. She seemed to hearken while I represented mildly the
expediency of learning to do her part in life well and creditably; how
conscience entered into the performance of duties some people
considered mean; how, in this country, a washerwoman is as worthy as
the President's wife, so long as she respects herself.
Norah's impassive face had not changed, but she interposed here:
"Beg pardon, ma'am! I've no thought of taking a hand with the
washing."
I was silly enough to go on with what I had tried to make so plain
that the wayfaring "living-out girl" could not err in taking it in. I
was willing to train her in the duties of her station. I set forth,
and would have specified what these were, but for a second
interruption that was evidently not intentionally disrespectful, and
was uttered with the bovine stolidity that never forsook her.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but I've always understood that all that made a
lady in Ameriky was eddercation, an' shure I have that 's well 's
you!"
She could read, or so I suppose, although I never saw a book in her
hand, and could probably write, after the fashion of her class.
With a smile at my folly that struggled with a sigh over hers, I let
her go. It was my fault not hers, that I had bruised my fists thumping
against a stone wall. Had I discoursed to her in Bengalee she would
have comprehended me no more imperfectly. The doom of hopelessness was
upon her. She was not merely a fool, but had taken the full degree as
a self-satisfied blockhead. I deserved what I got--and more of the
same sort.
Of a different type--being only a moderately conceited ignoramus, was
an otherwise well-educated woman whom I heard discourse volubly upon
ceramics and a valuable collection of old china she had picked up in a
foreign town. Among other kinds she named some choice bits of
"faience."
"Is not that used now as a general term for earthenware decorated with
color?" asked a listener modestly.
"Oh, by no means! It is never applied except to a particular and
exceedingly rare sort of pottery," went on the connoisseur. "But
perhaps you are not familiar with ceramic terms?"
"Not as familiar as I should be, I confess," rejoined the other,
gently regretful.
A couple of years later, I met the enthusiastic collector in the house
of the other party to the dialogue, and learned with her that our
hostess was renowned for her treasures of old china, and actually the
author of a book upon ceramics.
"What must she have thought of me the day I made such a fool of
myself!" moaned the humbled woman in a corner to me. "And you know--as
I have learned since, as she knew all the time,--that 'faience' is
used as a generic term! Well! I have had my lesson in talking of what
I do not understand. How could she have answered me so civilly and
gravely!"
I was too sorry for her to put into words the thought of the
proverbial answer, "according to his folly." The incident had its
moral and example for me too. The recollection has beaten back many a
vehement protest against egregious absurdity, and helped me endure
with apparent composure even the patronage of fools.
After all, there are so many mistakes made by other people that affect
nobody but themselves that Don Quixote might tire of tilting at them.
The more asinine the speaker the louder is his bray, and the more
surely do we encounter him in social and domestic haunts. To dispute
with him is to strengthen the stakes, and twist harder the cords of
his belief in himself. In recognizing the truth, so humiliating to
human reason, one wonders what effect would be produced by a
determined regime of letting alone. Would what St. James graphically
describes as "foaming out of their own shame," finally froth itself
into silence? Is not the opposition consequent upon the universal
desire to set other people right, the breath that blows the flame?
What would be the status of society, what the atmosphere of our homes,
were each of us to curb the impulse to controvert doubtful, but
important, statements:--to seem to acquiesce in--let us say, in Tom's
declaration that there are forty black cats in the back yard, and
Polly's opinion that Susie Jones is the prettiest girl in town, when
we consider her positively homely, and so on to the end of the day's
or week's or month's chapter? If, when we know that a man is a blatant
vaporer, we simply let him vapor, and mind our own business; if,
having gauged the measure of a woman's mind, and found it only an inch
deep, we do not fret our souls by vain dredgings in a channel to-day
that will fill up by to-morrow; if we give the fool the benefit of his
license; and expend thought and care upon that which is hopeful and
profitable--do we not prove ourselves prudent economists of time and
labor?
The subject is practical, and merits consideration. In this
working-day world of ours there is so much unavoidable pain, and so
much annoyance which we cannot overlook, that sensible people cushion
corners and shrink aside from brier-pricks. We do ourselves actual
physical harm when we lose temper; the tart speech takes virtue out of
us. A woman would better fatigue herself by righting an untidy chamber
than scold a servant for neglecting it. Foreigners comment surprisedly
upon the "anxious faces" of American women even of the better class.
The inchoate condition of our domestic service has undoubtedly much
to do with the premature seams that mar what would else be fair and
sweet, but I incline to the belief that more is due to a certain
irritableness which is a national characteristic,--a restless desire
to set everything right. The zeal for reform is commendable, but not
always according to knowledge. Certain forms of folly cure themselves,
if not flattered by grave rebuke, and others do not come within the
province of her who has her hands full already. It is easier for us
all to find fault than to overlook. It "just drives our woman-reformer
wild to hear some people talk!" The least aggressive of us knows for
herself the impotent vexation of attempting to convince one who is too
dull, or too dogged, to see reason. Why, then, yield to the
disposition to attempt the impracticable? If we would live worthily
and live long, we must school ourselves in the minor details of
self-control and everyday philosophy that make up a useful and
well-balanced life.